Thursday, June 30, 2011

This Week at The GREEN CT Realtor...

It's been a fabulous week at my house with my first EVER taste of having both children out of the house all day! It's even worth the craziness that comes with getting them out of the house at the same time with their swimsuits, beach towels, bento boxes, water bottles, change of clothes, getting them fed, teeth brushed, sunscreened up, and dressed. Having them both at camp has meant I've been able to spend a lot more time at the office, and seeing how this is my incredibly busy time of year...it certainly works out well for us!

When I've been home it's been about the huge construction project going on here. Perhaps it only feels huge because it's going so slowly? Last month we tore down the old garage and are in the process of building something along the lines of this carriage house:

I think it's much prettier than the main house, which means we'll need to give this place a facelift at some point too :) I've been shopping for oval windows, garage doors & corbels. It's going to be an expensive summer. I think I may need to sell a few extra houses this year. Anyone looking? Call me!

Also going on chez nous is lots of organic gardening! Yesterday I began my garlic harvest and my first lavender harvest of the season. I'm finding it takes a lot of scrubbing (not washing!) of the garlic to get all that dirt off. Hubby harvested the rhubarb and called a friend in France to get her recipe for rhubarb compote that is just divine. He made it this morning and it's sitting in a large mason jar already!

Both the garlic and the lavender smell absolutely wonderful to me. The 40 heads of garlic (so far) I'm cleaning, braiding & letting hang to dry for a few weeks. I'll also save several heads to use to start new garlic in the Fall. The lavender I dry and remove the flowers to make sachets that this harvest will be used to scent the little one's dresser drawers. We bought the dresser used from a friend who was moving out of state a few years ago so it needs that sweet smell that reminds me so much of Provence. (Harvesting lavender is pretty labor intensive work...but if you don't have your own plants and you'd like to pick some yourself, come on down to my neighborhood where my neighbor has a lavender farm and you can sit in the field on a little stool, wearing your sunhat, and pick from her fields.)

Speaking of Provence, it was a year ago yesterday that we landed in France with the kids. Sigh....

(Paris avec les enfants next to the Pompidou.)

On a happy note though, we just learned that friends from the Bretagne area will be visiting us in CT in 2 weeks and we're looking forward to hosting them. I'm going to have to go into overdrive on my garden though because this man's garden was the MOST well-tended I've ever witnessed. Here's a photo I took in his garden last summer.

You can't actually tell from this photo, but weeds dare not grow there. I've just psyched myself out over this and need to get myself to the farmer's market on Saturday morning to pretty up my yard. My garden especially.

Along the lines of gardening, I've just picked up a book called "In the Green Kitchen" by Alice Waters. I'm just starting it...it seems to be a lot about technique (which makes the byline so appropriate - Techniques to Learn by Heart) and features many chefs. Just looking at it is making me hungry. Must be time for a nibble then back to the grind at the office!